


on the road again

by prosodiical



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Post-Avengers (2012), Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-23 05:06:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3755533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/pseuds/prosodiical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane and Darcy, from Tromsø to (something they might be able to call) home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on the road again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Haywire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haywire/gifts).



It's still light outside when Jane's finally ready to leave, her equipment stacked in the back seats, their suitcases in the trunk, but then again, it's always light outside. Jane feels the sort of headachey-tired she gets after too long at the computer, running simulations one after another, and she squints up at the sun and wishes she could see the stars.

"What time is it?" Darcy mutters, when Jane shakes her awake. She's been cat-napping on the couch for the last few hours and it only takes her a minute of yawning and rubbing her eyes before she looks more awake than Jane's felt for a week. "Morning?"

"Well," Jane says, "for a definition of morning," and she checks her watch again. "Four-thirty."

Darcy lets out a heartfelt groan as she peers out toward the window, to the bright morning sunlight streaming through. "Man," she says, but she accepts Jane's gift of coffee without complaint and spends just a moment breathing it in, eyes closed, wrapping her hands around the mug. She groans in unabashed pleasure when she takes a sip, and Jane feels something tight in her chest loosen at Darcy's beaming smile. "Thanks," Darcy says. "I guess it's time to go?"

"I've got everything," Jane says, because she doesn't quite want to put it into words, because then it feels like she's running away. She's done too much of that, chasing her dreams, her research, a dozen more data points toward a conclusion that will never see a journal, a device that she might never be allowed to keep. Don always used to nag at her - "When will you ever stop chasing the impossible, Jane?" - but she's not the sort of astrophysicist to be happy in an observatory or a lab, not the sort to be rooted solidly in the theoretical. Aliens are real, Einstein-Rosen bridges can be built, and all she needs is data and time.

"Well then," Darcy says, derailing Jane's train of thought, "what are we waiting for?" She's smiling, bright-eyed, and Jane finds herself smiling back without conscious thought. Jane takes a last glance around the apartment - empty and clean like they haven't lived here for the last three months - and holds the door open for Darcy as they go.

Darcy's already slid into the drivers' seat when Jane's locked the apartment door, and she's just finished plugging her iPod into the sound system when Jane gets in the car. "I hope this thing gets good mileage," Darcy says, frowning down at her phone. "I can't tell how many gas stations are 'round here. Where are we heading?"

"South," Jane says. She's only got a rudimentary idea of where she wants to go, but - "Germany, I think. Berlin."

Darcy looks up at her, something complicated in her expression, but she seems to give it up as a bad idea as she turns back to her phone. "Sure." She sets her phone on the armrest and checks the mirrors, then starts the car. 

The smooth rumble of the engine and the quiet start of Darcy's road-trip playlist sends Jane back to those long nights driving the continental US, storms in her dreams. She hides a yawn behind her hand and Darcy glances over and says, "Get some sleep."

"Thanks," Jane says, around another yawn, and she closes her eyes against the blinding sunlight and drifts.

Her sleep is strange and piecemeal; she thinks she wakes when they're stopped, once, Darcy's broken Norwegian and her bright unselfconscious laugh, and Jane dreams of reaching out to take some of it for herself, Darcy's uncomplicated enjoyment of life, and hold it tight and close in her chest so it won't float away. She dreams of stars and wormholes and the equations that make them, _but that was then and this is now_ belting out some far distance away. 

When she wakes up next she's barely conscious before she scrabbles for her notebook, a bright shining moment of inspiration and maths swirling in her head to a pop beat, and after the first rush of numbers she chews on her pen as she thinks it through. She doesn't know how much time passes then, rock to soulful ballads to the heavy beat of dance music, but when Darcy taps her elbow the car's stopped again, and Jane abruptly realises she's starving.

"C'mon, you," Darcy says, grinning, and Jane rubs at her eyes and blinks out at her, framed by the sun. "Food time."

"Yeah," Jane says, and runs her hands through her hair, her fingers untangling the knots. "Thanks."

"What else do you pay me for?" Darcy teases, and opens her door. They're stopped at what passes for a roadside diner; the signs are all in a language Jane can barely parse but Darcy's got a phrasebook and a friendly smile, "and everyone here speaks English, anyway," she confides to Jane over cups of coffee and plates of food.

Jane'd fallen on it ravenously when it had first appeared, but now she's slowed down, picking at the roasted potatoes on her plate. "Should we stop soon?"

Darcy looks thoughtfully outside, at the sun edging slowly down in the sky, and forks one of Jane's potatoes. "A few hours, maybe," she says, around the mouthful. "This whole daylight thing is super disconcerting. Man, nighttime," she adds with a wistful sigh.

"I miss it too," Jane admits, and Darcy nods in agreement.

"It's the stars, right? Well, let's keep heading south. We'll get there."

True to her word, it's a few hours later when Darcy pulls off the highway to stop at a motel, and Jane thinks these things must be universal when they enter, straight worn comforters on beds that have seen better days, small curtained windows and an out-of-date TV. Darcy flops on the closest bed and Jane sets her equipment down in the corner, plugging in the computer so she can start another run of variables overnight. Jane's not tired, exactly, but she feels stretched and restless, and she glances over to Darcy, fiddling with the remote. They don't talk about the news reports that flash by as she channel-surfs, the American accents and the flashes of New York; Darcy just clicks on by, and Jane tries to lose herself again in her work.

It works, mostly. Darcy's off using up their hot water when Jane's finished, the computer whirring quietly behind the soft muted noise of the cartoons on the TV, and Jane wanders over to Darcy's bed. She sits on it gingerly, staring at the remote like she's afraid it will bite, because she wants to know - but she doesn't know if she can handle it. It was difficult enough to keep her composure dealing with the SHIELD agents at Tromsø, as politely and firmly obstructing as they were, and knowing that the data exists and seeing it with her own two eyes - well, Jane knew shouting at them wouldn't get her anywhere, but she felt the urge rising up anyway. Instead she pushes it aside, and pulls out her notebook again, staring at the pages until her equations blur before her eyes.

"Your turn," Darcy says, her voice off to the side. Jane blinks herself back to reality but whatever she was going to say is lost as her attention is caught on the length of Darcy's hair, the wet trail it's left down the line of her neck to the curve of her breasts, barely covered by a too-small towel. Jane's mouth is dry and she drags her eyes back to Darcy's expectant expression.

"Is there even any hot water left?" she manages, and Darcy shoves at her good-naturedly as she sits down beside her, a warm solid line against Jane's side.

"'Course there is," she says dismissively, already grabbing for her duffel bag, and Jane has to look away from the curve of her spine as she leans over the side of the bed. "I left the shampoo out for you."

Jane makes a noise of agreement, she thinks, because she has to hurry and shut the bathroom door before Darcy's towel drops to the floor. She spends a moment leaning her forehead against the cool glass of the fogged mirror, condensation collecting on her fingertips, and when she pulls back with a sigh she's left smudges all along the glass. 

It isn't that she's not noticed Darcy is attractive, because she has. Darcy tends to hide it under layers; too-large sweaters and beanies, hipster glasses and her head ducked down, smile hidden behind her hands, but they've been living together long enough by now that Jane'd have to be blind not to notice. It isn't that she's never even thought about it, because she has, back in those long days in New Mexico, staring at the stars, Darcy giving her sly looks under her eyelashes; Jane thinks that if she actually reached out and kissed her back then, Darcy would have kissed back. But now everything's all tangled in Jane's head, her equations and her attractions and she knows she's hardly an easy girlfriend to have, hardly the sort of person who would be happy being anything but what she is, but Darcy has been alongside her all this way, has put up with her moods and her obsessions and manages to make life a little brighter for it - 

It's that in the end, Darcy's still here.

Jane tips back her head under the spray of water, lets it cascade onto her face and tries to think of nothing, but instead she thinks of Darcy's soft hands, how they'd feel tangled in her hair, how sometimes all Jane wants is to push her down on the bed and kiss her way up Darcy's creamy thighs. Jane rinses out her hair before turning off the tap, and she stands there a long moment, staring at her fogged reflection in the tiny mirror, before she puts on a towel and leaves the bathroom.

Darcy barely glances up from her laptop, too entranced in videos with the volume turned up, the TV muted in the background, and Jane falls back to her own bed after she's changed and checked on her simulations. They're going, calculations chugging along, and Darcy looks up again and gives her a tired-looking smile. She's been driving all day, Jane remembers, and she says, "You should go to sleep." 

Darcy rolls her eyes. "Sure, sure," she says, "when you're the one telling me, I know I'm way past normal hours," and Jane doesn't even know the time, she wants to say, but she thinks she barely manages it around a yawn. "Sleep, Janey," Darcy's voice says, and Jane wonders when she got so far away; she's lost, then, to the whir of her computer and the steady sound of Darcy's breathing, her presence something steady and comforting across the room.

The next day is the same, and the day after that; Darcy picks up food in the morning, meals which range from toasted sandwiches and mysterious packets of snacks from gas stations to sit-down diners, where Jane has to flick through her wallet for krona for tips. Jane manages to rig something up the second day in the car, a little generator which lets her run numbers while they're on the move, and Darcy's set up a script for data analysis she runs in the evenings when they crash for the night. Darcy chatters about her playlists, about politics, about things that Jane can respond to without knowing much about, and Jane lets equations spin in her head as each night gets a little darker, a little more like home.

Jane's working on making more sensors and is fiddling with cables when they're catching a ferry somewhere. Darcy is out, leaning over the edge of the railing and letting the wind whip her hair wild, and she comes back to the car red-cheeked and smiling only to grab Jane's hand and pull her out. The air is bracingly cold for all that it's summer and Jane's breath is stolen out of her chest, by the wind or by the blinding smile on Darcy's face. Darcy doesn't release her hand until they land at the other dock, until their fingers are stiff and wind-chafed and Jane doesn't think she ever wants to let go.

The sun sets properly there, on the northern edge of Germany, and Darcy stops them outside the city, far enough away that they can see the stars through the intermittent light. Darcy's packed a picnic blanket and she spreads it out on the grass next to their motel door, and there's enough room for the both of them there, lying quiet in the dark. 

"Are we going to talk about, you know...?" Darcy says, after a long moment, and for once Jane doesn't feel herself shying away from the thought. Instead, she says,

"Not yet."

Darcy makes a noise, curious and a little disappointed, and she turns on her side, eyes luminous in the moonlit dark. "Jane," she says, and Jane shakes her head and reaches out, lacing their fingers together.

"Soon, I swear."

"You better," Darcy says, and nudges their shoulders together but stays there, a press against Jane's side. "Mopey Jane sucks."

"Really," Jane says, amused despite herself, "well, I'll get on fixing that," and Darcy laughs and sighs all at once.

"So, what's in Berlin?"

What's in Berlin is less than Jane hoped for but more than she expected, and the new devices she built are sensitive enough to still find traces of magic wrought. Jane thinks she has the gist of it, really; the intersections of magic and science, of her life and the life up there, somewhere, and it makes her chest ache something strange. It's nothing like the first time, when she felt lost and obsessed, like if only she could work hard enough she'd win him back; instead it feels almost like seeing Don again at a conference, his awkward laugh and terrible jokes, her realisation that what she missed wasn't much like him at all.

Darcy's walking back to their car and her, holding out the scanner. "No beeping on the thing."

"I've got enough," Jane says, and she takes the scanner from Darcy's hands and sets it down on the bonnet. Then, on a whim, she takes Darcy's hand and tugs at her; Darcy raises an eyebrow and says,

"Jane," but Jane presses their mouths together and steals her exhale, Darcy's lips soft and pliant under hers. Darcy falls into it like they've done this a million times before, her hands settling on Jane's hips like they belong, and she huffs a breath of a sigh when they break apart, pulling back the barest inch and resting their foreheads together. "You sure?"

"Come on," says Jane, tangling her fingers in Darcy's hair, and Darcy laughs into her mouth until Jane steals all her breath away.


End file.
